pappilon wrote:Would be true if they were actually firing SEM missiles. IIRC some Havenite said "our missiles may not be as good as yours, but they should be good enough against Sollies. Besides we have plenty and our production lines are undamaged."

Haven's missiles are almost as good as Manticore's. They got everything Erewhon had two years after the cease-fire, and Shannon has been tinkerin' with 'em ever since. The only thing they don't have is Apollo.———————————It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

pappilon wrote:Would be true if they were actually firing SEM missiles. IIRC some Havenite said "our missiles may not be as good as yours, but they should be good enough against Sollies. Besides we have plenty and our production lines are undamaged."

Haven's missiles are almost as good as Manticore's. They got everything Erewhon had two years after the cease-fire, and Shannon has been tinkerin' with 'em ever since. The only thing they don't have is Apollo.———————————It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

It won't be long until the Haven missiles will more or less match those of Manticore.

Everyone is waiting to hear what the combined forces of Hemphill and Foraker do.

Everyone is waiting to hear what the combined forces of Hemphill and Foraker do.

Oh yes, anything with the Double S brand is going to be quite spectacular

In six months advance of the story line almost nothing except upgrades and maybe a bit of tactical can come out of that corroboration. We'll have to wait on the next arc or the extension of the Saganami and/or Torch arcs. Maybe an export bit to Erewhon & Maya

ldwechsler wrote:Everyone is waiting to hear what the combined forces of Hemphill and Foraker do.

Yeah, that's what I said a long time ago:

The galaxy awaits in anticipation and terror.

Wasn't Haven already upscaling some of their designs below the wall in anticipation of improved compensators? Larger nodes or some such? One immediate thing. Still, with advancement of the timeline a mere 6 months, there is little time for the dream team to do much more than get acquainted, get up to speed and figure what can be done with the designs Haven already has.

pappilon wrote:Wasn't Haven already upscaling some of their designs below the wall in anticipation of improved compensators? Larger nodes or some such? One immediate thing. Still, with advancement of the timeline a mere 6 months, there is little time for the dream team to do much more than get acquainted, get up to speed and figure what can be done with the designs Haven already has.

That was in 1906. The Mars class CA (L)was rebuilt into the Mars B class with larger impellers in the hopes of getting advanced compensators and taking the most advantage of them. Unfortunately, all that extra horsepower only gave them the ability to tractor extra pods during the 1st war, because the advanced compensator wasn't cracked during the first war.

******RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."

pappilon wrote:Wasn't Haven already upscaling some of their designs below the wall in anticipation of improved compensators? Larger nodes or some such? One immediate thing. Still, with advancement of the timeline a mere 6 months, there is little time for the dream team to do much more than get acquainted, get up to speed and figure what can be done with the designs Haven already has.

That was in 1906. The Mars class CA (L)was rebuilt into the Mars B class with larger impellers in the hopes of getting advanced compensators and taking the most advantage of them. Unfortunately, all that extra horsepower only gave them the ability to tractor extra pods during the 1st war, because the advanced compensator wasn't cracked during the first war.

So, not much chance of anything in the final episode, then? I think a few months (<6) is too soon to design and build a new class of anything but a LAC class already on the drawing board. Unless, of course Herlander is a great teacher (he is motivated enough, certainly) and they can actually kick out a streak drive.

I think the R side will be a while completing what was being developed at OB. D, OTOH, will be adjusting/modifying cirrent designs to meet the spatial needs of Manty tech.

pappilon wrote:Wasn't Haven already upscaling some of their designs below the wall in anticipation of improved compensators? Larger nodes or some such? One immediate thing. Still, with advancement of the timeline a mere 6 months, there is little time for the dream team to do much more than get acquainted, get up to speed and figure what can be done with the designs Haven already has.

Theemile wrote:That was in 1906. The Mars class CA (L)was rebuilt into the Mars B class with larger impellers in the hopes of getting advanced compensators and taking the most advantage of them. Unfortunately, all that extra horsepower only gave them the ability to tractor extra pods during the 1st war, because the advanced compensator wasn't cracked during the first war.

pappilon wrote:So, not much chance of anything in the final episode, then? I think a few months (<6) is too soon to design and build a new class of anything but a LAC class already on the drawing board. Unless, of course Herlander is a great teacher (he is motivated enough, certainly) and they can actually kick out a streak drive.

I think the R side will be a while completing what was being developed at OB. D, OTOH, will be adjusting/modifying cirrent designs to meet the spatial needs of Manty tech.

Even if they could kick out a streak drive design tomorrow, it would still take time to build (not even counting any time it would take to build any tools to make the parts) and then install. Just the install would take quite some time (ignoring the fact the streak drive is twice the size of the existing military hyper generators), based on how long it took Hancock Station to replace Nike's fusion reactor {CPT(jg) Tankersley's initial estimate}:

The Short Victorious War, Chapter 6 wrote:"Sorry we're late, Ma'am," Henke said formally. "Captain Tankersley was tied up on another job when we docked.""No problem, Mike." Honor's soprano was cooler than she would have preferred, but she held out her hand. "Welcome aboard Nike, Captain. I hope you can get her back on-line quickly for us.""We'll certainly try, Milady."Tankersley's voice was deeper than she remembered, rumbling about in his chest, and a trickle of someone else's feelings oozed into her brain. It was Nimitz, tapping her into Tankersley's emotions as he'd learned to do since Yeltsin. She was still far from accustomed to his doing that, and she reached up to touch him in a silent injunction to stop. But even as she did, she recognized the matching discomfort in the other captain, a sense of awkward regret over the circumstances of their first meeting."Thank you," she said more naturally, and gestured at the scanner. "Commander Ravicz has just been showing me the damage. Take a look, Captain."Tankersley glanced at the display, then looked again, more closely, and pursed his lips in a silent whistle."All the way across?" He cocked an eyebrow and grimaced at Ravicz's doleful nod, then smiled wryly at Honor. "These new alloys will be wonderful things, Milady—once we figure out exactly what we're doing with them.""Indeed." Honor's lips twitched at his tone, and she tapped the generator. "Am I right in assuming we're looking at complete replacement here?""I'm afraid so, Ma'am. Oh, I could try a weld, but we're talking a bead a good twenty meters long just across the outer face. This stuff's not supposed to break in the first place, and according to The Book, patching should only be considered as a last resort. The fracture cuts right through two of the central load-bearing brackets and the number two hydrogen feed channel, too, I'm afraid. Odds are we'd have to pull it anyway, and I'd rather not leave you with a repaired unit that could crap out again without warning. My people can try to patch it once we have it in the shop. If they pull it off—and if it meets specs after they do, which I doubt it will—we can put it in stores for later use. In the meantime, we can get Nike back up and running with a new housing.""You have one we can swap out?""Oh, yes. We're topped up with spares for almost everything." Tankersley's pride in his newly operational base showed, and Honor felt herself thaw even further at his obvious readiness to tackle the job."How long are we talking, then?" she asked."That's the bad news, Milady," Tankersley said more seriously. "You don't have an access way large enough to move the spare through, so we're going to have to open up the fusion room." He put his hands on his hips and turned slowly, surveying the huge, immaculate compartment, and his eyes were unhappy."If Nike were a smaller ship, we could disable the charges and take out the emergency panel, but that won't work here."Honor nodded in understanding. As in most merchantmen, fusion rooms in destroyers and light cruisers—and some smaller heavy cruisers—were designed with blow-out bulkheads to permit them to jettison malfunctioning reactors as an emergency last resort. But larger warships couldn't do that, unless their designers deliberately made their power plants more vulnerable than they had to. Nike was a kilometer and a half long, with a maximum beam of over two hundred meters, and her fusion plants were buried along the central axis of her hull. That protected them from enemy fire, but it also meant she simply had to hope the failsafes worked in the face of battle damage which did get through to them . . . and that there was no easy access to them from outside."We're going to have to go through the armor and a lot of bulkheads, Milady, and then we're going to have to put them all back again," Tankersley went on. "We've got the equipment for it, but [b]I imagine it's going to take at least two months—more probably fourteen or fifteen weeks.""Could Hephaestus knock that time down if we returned to Manticore?" She kept her tone as neutral as possible, but if Tankersley took any offense at the question it didn't show."No, Milady. Oh, Hephaestus has an edge in ancillary equipment, but I doubt they could shave more than a week off our time, and you'd spend twice that long in transit for the round trip."[/b]"I was afraid of that." Honor sighed. "Well, it seems we're in your hands. How soon can we get started?""I'll get my own survey people over here within the hour," Tankersley promised. "We're still pretty busy with expansion work, but I think I can juggle my schedules a bit and start clearing away the control runs by next watch. I've got a tin-can in Slip Two with her after impeller ring wide open, and my exterior crews will need another day or so to button her back up. As soon as they're finished, Nike gets top priority.""Outstanding," Honor said. "If I have to turn my ship over to someone, Captain, I'm glad it's at least someone who gets right to it.""Oh, I'll certainly do that, Milady!" Tankersley turned back from his study of the bulkheads with a grin. "No mere yard dog wants a starship captain on his neck. Don't worry. We'll have you back up as quickly as possible."

The Short Victorious War, Chapter 10 wrote:"Neither do I," Honor said darkly. She finished drying her hair, draped the towel around her neck, and changed the subject. "How are we coming on Fusion Three?[b] I just got back from the Admiral's latest exercise, and I haven't really checked in with Mike yet.""We're doing better than I thought we would, actually," he told her with a satisfied air. "Commander Ravicz's suggestion that we come up from below is going to chop at least a couple of weeks off my estimate. We have to cut through more decks, and repairing all the circuit and service runs we're breaking is going to be a nightmare, but avoiding the armor's really speeding things up." He shook his head. "I know The Book insists on coming in from the side to avoid the control runs, but that part was written before the new alloys came in. I imagine we'll see some quiet procedure changes once BuShips digests our reports, because this is not only faster, but it's going to let us put things back together more quickly, even with the need to rewire."Honor nodded in agreement. The R&D types' latest armor—a complex ceramic and metal alloy unbelievably light for its volume and toughness—was formed in place as part of the basic hull matrix, not added on later. That gave it vastly improved integrity against damage but meant there were no convenient sections to pull in the event of repairs. On the other hand, armor, however light, still used mass. No warship had that to waste, and since a warship's impeller wedge protected it against fire from above or below, BuShips' designers armored the inner areas of its top and bottom lightly or not at all in order to maximize protection elsewhere.Nike was no wall of battle ship, but leaving her top and bottom unarmored let her flanks carry twelve centimeters of side armor over more critical areas and as much as a meter over her vitals—like her fusion rooms. That much battle steel could stand up to a near-miss from a megaton-range nuke . . . and sneered at the best efforts of a standard laser cutter. Indeed, getting through it was a nightmare job even with chem-catalyst gear.All of which explained why she'd been delighted by Ravicz's suggestion, and she was equally, if quietly, pleased by Tankersley's reaction to it. Yard dogs weren't noted for responsiveness to recommendations from shipboard officers. As a rule, they were too concerned with keeping interfering busybodies out from underfoot while they got on with their jobs to consider whether or not a suggestion had merit, but Tankersley had embraced the idea enthusiastically. He'd praised Ravicz generously in his reports, too, and that couldn't hurt the engineer's chance for promotion down the line.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

So 14 to 15 weeks minus 2 to 3 weeks = 11 to 13 weeks to replace Nike's fusion reactor. Since the hyper generator is probably located inside the core hull, it will take most probably at least the same amount of time to replace it with a streak drive (ignoring the need to make room for one twice the size of the existing hyper generator). That's only a little less than 3 months at best, and the next book supposedly only covers 6 months.

-------------------------------------------------------------History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.